


the cold will come again

by jayeinacross



Category: Captain America (2011), Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-22
Updated: 2012-09-22
Packaged: 2017-11-14 18:57:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayeinacross/pseuds/jayeinacross
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve still dreams of the ice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the cold will come again

**Author's Note:**

> For my angst bingo prompt, 'pneumonia'.

Steve still dreams of the ice. Wakes shivering and shaking, plagued by memories of sinking into that unbearable cold, and waking to it again, so many years later. Ice and snow and wind and cold; they remind him of the most horrifying things that he has ever had to go through.

He had at least been able to say goodbye to Peggy. They never got their dance in the end, but to be able to speak to his girl before he went down was more than most soldiers got. And Peggy would move on, she was strong - maybe meet someone else, get married, have children. She deserved that.

But when Bucky died, it was Steve that had to go on without him. He watched him fall, inches away from his fingertips, and he still dreams of that moment.

Steve still wonders exactly what happened. If Bucky hit the rocks, if it ended quickly. Or if he fell into the river and drowned, or if he managed to hang on a little while longer and died with his blood frozen in his veins.

And Steve remembers everything - the babies back home who got pneumonia, who were too small to fight it off. The soldiers who succumbed to hypothermia and were made easy targets because they were weaker. His best friend; the thought of Bucky dying slowly, the warmth drained out of him, knowing that Steve failed to save him. How Steve felt himself slipping away, trapped inside the ice, and how he woke up, shivering and shuddering from the memories.

He can’t find any joy in the snow anymore. When he sees children running around during Christmas, he only worries that they’ll get locked outside and freeze. When he sees couples skating on rinks, even though he’s told that they’re safer than ponds, he still imagines the ice cracking and plunging them into the water, then freezing above their heads, trapping them. Steve will never forget the cold, and all the danger and terror and hopelessness it brings, a feeling that will stay with him forever.

But now when he jolts from these nightmares, he’s not alone in a small bed, shuddering violently, with no one to comfort him. The bed is big enough to fit six people, but Steve and Tony always end up curled up around each other right in the middle.

When Steve feels the cold metal of the arc reactor against his skin when Tony’s wrapped up in his arms, he thinks that maybe it’ll happen to him, too - it will consume him; not just the shrapnel and the sickness, but the loneliness, the insecurity. He wraps himself in his work, shuts himself up in the shop, pushes everyone away. But Steve has wormed himself in somehow, he’s a regular presence in the shop, and even when he’s not, there are signs - his sketchbook and pencils lying on one of the desks, a few of his drawings that Tony’s hung up around the place.

The cold will come again; that is inevitable. But perhaps they’ll be able to save each other from it.


End file.
